


Home is where the heart is

by LadyAJ_13



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: 1990s, Friendship, Love, M/M, Missed Chances, Morse-era, Peter Jakes Returns to Oxford, and a bit of those chances coming round again, on his holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:21:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22588600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyAJ_13/pseuds/LadyAJ_13
Summary: His flight from America landed six days ago. Two days ago, he packed his bags and caught the train to Oxford. If he’s honest with himself, and at this point in his life, there seems little point in not being, there’s only one person he’d be happy to run into.
Relationships: Peter Jakes/Endeavour Morse
Comments: 6
Kudos: 31





	Home is where the heart is

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the sappy title :P

His flight from America landed six days ago. 

He spent the first two days in London, lost in a city that felt nothing like any kind of home except for the way you could find a decent cup of tea in any cafe. He did the sights, sent a postcard, and stood at the river he once knew, staring at ferries, that here take the place of the punts miles upstream.

Then he took a day trip to the beach - Brighton - because he’s not been to the coast much and Wyoming is as landlocked as they come. He asked the man with the donkeys to take a picture of him, ankle deep in the surf, and bought sticks of rock for Hope and the grandkids. 

On the fourth day, he packed his bags and caught the train to Oxford.

Just over an hour and he stepped out onto streets that were both deeply familiar and entirely foreign. Even here, amongst the seeping history of the colleges, time has moved on and new buildings and shops and parks throw him off course. But there’s also enough that’s stayed the same to leave him feeling like he’s walking in a dream, half back in time, and it has him turning every corner gingerly. Bright and Thursday must be long gone by now, but he wonders - if a familiar gait will resolve itself into the aged face of Jim Strange, or if a flip of hair will catch his eye and there will be Trewlove. 

Or worse. Faces that he’ll never be able to forget, waiting, anywhere, to catch him off-guard and drag him back down.

If he’s honest with himself, and at this point in his life, there seems little point in not being, there’s only one person he’d be happy to run into. But he walks the streets for two days and it doesn’t happen, because Oxford is a city and he’s not exactly haunting the seedy, crime-ridden backstreets. He takes a tour of Lonsdale College because he can, and tries to imagine a younger Morse stalking the halls, sure of his place. The image refuses to hold, drifts away into vapour.

Finally, he bites the bullet and drops into the police station just as shifts are ending. It’s not a surprise that Morse is still there, and nor is it a surprise that as they head down the steps side by side, he nudges them both towards the Lamb. They deal with pleasantries as they walk, polite enquiries that have him rolling his eyes internally. He didn’t come back for this.

He’s not sure what he did come back for.

They settle into a dark wood booth with their drinks. He quit smoking years ago, after one too many close calls with a fag end and a bale of hay. Still. There’s something about the air of an old Oxford pub, the way alcohol and smoke and sweat have distilled over decades into the grain of the building. It has his fingers twitching for an inside pocket, for a spark and a breath and a fix he doesn’t really want.

Morse has changed. He studies him, being obvious about it because so much time has passed that he can get away with calling it simple curiosity. His hair is completely white now, and it makes him feel better about his own salt-and-pepper. Peter knows his own skin is lined, wrinkled, and blames it on long years out in all weathers, but it’s burnished him bronze where the sun catches and Hope has always said how it suits him. The work has kept him trim, and he’s moved from lanky to wiry, strong even now. 

There’s something a little pathetic, he knows, at the way he’s preened for this visit. Picked out his best shirt, even considered dipping into the old Brylcreem for the first time in a few decades. Sitting here mentally listing his best attributes, as if he needs the confidence boost.

He slurps at his lemonade, wishing he still drank beyond a sherry at Christmas. Alcohol clogs his head now, leaving him groggy and distempered the next day, so he doesn’t much bother. Another change from back then, when an evening without a pint in his hand was rare.

What the hell.

“I had a bit of a thing for you,” he says in a beat of silence.

He tells himself it doesn’t much matter how Morse reacts. They’re both old men, they’ve lived their lives, and Peter’s return ticket is booked for tomorrow.

Some form of response would be appreciated, though.

“Morse?”

“Yes, I know-” Peter blinks, furiously - “a chip on your shoulder. Hard to miss, Jakes.”

Oh god, he’s being obtuse. He thought Morse was smarter than this. Maybe he was better at hiding it back then than he thought? Or maybe even now, in the 90s, it’s not a riddle answer that springs easily to mind: I wasn’t mean, Morse, I was pulling pigtails. He could easily leave it, move the conversation elsewhere and know Morse will think no more about it. But he’s opened the gate now, and to use a farming metaphor the cows have stampeded even if Morse is staring blankly the other way. He’s not sure he wants to round them up.

Perhaps he has spent too long in the Wyoming sun after all. He’s sure he used to be better with words.

“No, like - I love Hope,” he interrupts himself. It seems very important to make that clear. He hadn’t then, perhaps, she was just a girl he used, who was probably using him back, and suddenly they were in over their heads. But she offered him a way out, one that would save her too, and love grew in the intervening years. He would do anything for her.

Morse nods.

“But then, I-” he can’t say it. He knows Oxford is not small town America, but even here, even now, years after they changed all the laws, it’s not something he can come out and say. “You too,” he finished awkwardly, knowing he’s left enough gaps for misinterpretation. 

“Really?” Morse’s voice is small, shocked. He’s got it. 

Peter shrugs, gulping his lemonade until the ice clinks against his teeth. “Another?” he asks, shaking his own glass, and doesn’t wait for a response before escaping to the bar.

He orders another beer for Morse, and a couple of packets of crisps. It doesn’t look so much like Morse forgets to eat anymore, but he’s as rumpled as he ever was, and Peter has lived a life of feeding clamouring children any time he went out anywhere - old habits die hard. He eyes the beer taps, then the shelf of whiskeys behind the barman’s head. 

“Anything else?”

“Lemonade,” he answers automatically, and watches as the barman underestimates the fizz, letting it run down the sides of the glass. He pays with sticky fingers.

“Are we going to talk about it, or pretend you never said anything?”

Peter stumbles into his chair, ripping open a crisp packet.

“Or say nothing at all?”

“What’s there to say?”

“Obviously something, Jakes, or you wouldn’t have come halfway round the world to say it.”

He hadn’t come back for Morse. He’d come back because it had been thirty years. Because he’s settled in Wyoming and he’s going to die there, and he thought maybe he should say goodbye to the country that was his for so long. “I’m just on holiday.”

“Without the wife. Or the kids.”

“The kids are grown.” He fumbles in his pocket for his wallet, and pulls out a picture. It’s a few years old, but it clearly shows his two sons, daughter, and three grandkids. It’s a staged, portrait picture, one Hope used as their family Christmas card. 

The silence ticks, and Peter chews at the inside of his mouth. “I said it already, it’s you that’s not said anything.”

“They’re… they look happy.”

“Not about the photo Morse, Christ.” He ducks his head, scraping over the crown with one hand. He should have got a whiskey.

“Maybe we shouldn’t have this conversation here.”

\--

He follows Morse as they walk, feeling oddly like a schoolboy on his way to the headmaster’s office. The endless streets he half knows don’t help, passing forgotten landmarks of his youth - the road of his first murder enquiry after making detective. The postbox where he’d meet Hope, after she’d sneaked out of college. 

Morse walks up to a house, and unlocks the door with steady hands. He still hasn’t said anything, but. He’s not the type to lure Peter away to smash his face in. People change, but not that much. Nervous tension has left him buzzing, keyed up, and the first tendrils of something like hope dare to take root.

He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but probably something like the dump of a basement flat he once helped Morse move in to. Not this; a home. Oh, there’s no sign of a womanly touch, but there’s colour on the walls and used plates dotted amongst the record sleeves. Not migrated to cassettes, then.

Morse doesn’t offer to take his jacket, but he does proffer the whiskey bottle. He interprets Peter’s half-hearted shrug as a yes, and pours two measures which sit untouched on the side table.

Peter keeps his hands in his pockets, and stares around at the touches of personality littering the room. There’s a photo on the mantelpiece. A jumper slung over the sofa. He can wait all night. He figures this is on Morse now; he’s said what there was to say. 

“Jakes.”

The sound of his name, one he so seldom hears these days, drags his attention back to the other man. 

Morse steps forwards, until they’re only inches apart. He still has to look down, but the angle isn’t as sharp as with Hope. He wonders if Morse finds it odd looking up, or if he does more of this than Peter would expect. He could be one of hundreds for all he knows, but he thinks he’s not, by the hesitant way Morse settles one hand on his arm.

The kiss is almost a surprise, for all that he watched Morse lean closer. It’s briefly unsure, then it isn’t, it takes what it wants, and this - this fits. He should never have expected Morse to _say_ anything, should have known he would be impulsive and demanding instead. It feels like a missing puzzle piece, and the thought sends something dark and painful through his sternum.

“I love Hope,” he says, desperately, when Morse pulls back. It sounds like a lie, here in another man’s house, lips bruised and tasting of beer he hasn’t drunk. It looks like a lie, the way his hands clutch to Morse’s hips.

“I know,” is all Morse says. “I love Joan Thursday.”

“Joan?” Peter laughs - inappropriate, he’s sure. “I thought-”

“We’re not together. She got married, moved away. Kids, I think. Heard the odd thing through Thursday, before-” he stops himself, and Peter nods. He knew he’d be gone, the man would have to be pushing ninety five to still be around, and given a life of drinking, pipe smoking and getting shot - well. 

“We’re a pair, aren’t we?” He means pathetic. He means look at them, two old, sad men, and yes, he’s aware Morse got a shorter shrift than he did. But Morse grins, his blue eyes the same as they always were, and he wonders. A pair. 

“I have to go back,” he adds, because he can’t leave Hope. He can’t. It might sound like lies but he _does_ love her, and he promised her, and he doesn’t belong in these cobbled streets any more. The air here moves sluggishly through his lungs, heavy with time and smoke and memories. Choking him. Everywhere but here, with Morse. “You could come?” he asks wildly.

Morse shakes his head. “I’ve got work to do here. Can you imagine me shearing a sheep?”

Cows, he corrects mentally, they don’t have sheep. But he knows what Morse means, and no, he can’t imagine him miles from anywhere, knee deep in muck and burned in the sun. Can’t imagine him happy, anyway. Oxford runs in his blood in a way it never did in Peter’s, despite being born and bred.

“Maybe, when you retire.”

“Maybe,” Morse agrees, following it up with a soft kiss that’s half promise, half goodbye. Peter opens his mouth, wanting to chase away the finality, but Morse gentles him until he steps back. “Stay here tonight. I’ve got a spare bedroom, I can drive you to the airport in the morning.”

It’s not what the flare of hope within him wanted, but maybe they’ve left it all too late. Maybe going back to Hope with nothing more than the press of foreign lips against his is the best ending they could have. 

“Thanks, Morse.”

It’s the same smile, he realises, when Morse quirks his lips. Same smile, same eyes. “Someday. Maybe.”


End file.
